**FILE** Employees leave the Wixom Assembly Plant in a Wixom, Mich. file photo Jan. 23, 2006. Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers have reached an agreement to offer buyout packages to more than 75,000 ... more

**FILE** Employees leave the Wixom Assembly Plant in a Wixom, Mich. file photo Jan. 23, 2006. Ford Motor Co. and the United Auto Workers have reached an agreement to offer buyout packages to more than 75,000 ... more

Photo: PAUL SANCYA

Ford to offer job buyouts to 75,000 / All U.S. autoworkers included in restructuring bid, UAW says

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2006-09-15 04:00:00 PDT Detroit -- Ford Motor Co. will offer buyout packages of up to $140,000 to all of the more than 75,000 workers at its U.S. plants, the United Auto Workers union said Thursday, a day before the automaker details a revised turnaround plan.

Meanwhile, two top Ford executives, including Americas Chief Operating Officer Anne Stevens, stepped down, barely a week after Alan Mulally took over as chief executive of the struggling automaker.

Ford shares fell 10 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $9.09 Thursday after trimming earlier losses triggered by a news report that the automaker's internal forecasts pointed to a loss of up to $9 billion this year.

Ford said it would announce its long-awaited update to its restructuring plans today. The turnaround plan marks Ford's second attempt since January to come to grips with falling market share and slowing sales of its once highly profitable line of pickup trucks and SUVs.

"The pressure for Ford to accelerate its current restructuring efforts has reached a crescendo," said Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy, who has a "neutral" rating on Ford.

Looking beyond the scope of today's expected announcement, Murphy said Ford would need to lessen the grip of the founding Ford family on the automaker, negotiate a revised labor deal with the UAW and bring a more aggressive style to its management.

The UAW, in an e-mail to its members, said the buyout packages, which include early retirement incentives, were also being extended to union-represented workers at Automotive Components Holdings, a group of factories formerly owned by Visteon Corp., Ford's former parts unit.

In the e-mail, which was provided to Reuters by a union official, UAW Vice President Bob King said the union is "deeply concerned" about Ford's loss of market share.

Ford had taken a more cautious, plant-by-plant approach to its attempt to cut workers. Expectations had been building that the No. 2 automaker would follow the successful, company-wide buyout program offered earlier this year by General Motors Corp.

"This was inevitable," said Richard Block, a professor of labor and industrial relations at Michigan State University." After the UAW and GM agreed to the buyouts, there was no way that Ford was going to avoid them."

As of early September, only several thousand Ford workers had taken the company's more limited buyout offers, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said Tuesday.

Ford's board met Wednesday and Thursday to approve the restructuring measures as an update to the company's "Way Forward" plan, which calls for cutting up to 30,000 jobs and closing 14 plants by 2012.

Following Ford's $1.4 billion loss in the first half of the year, the automaker promised to be more aggressive in its restructuring.

The company's automotive operations are projected to rack up pretax losses of $5.6 billion to $5.9 billion this year and the company overall is expected to lose up to $9 billion, the Detroit News reported Thursday, citing an unnamed source.

The figures were from a Sept. 6 internal report prepared by Chief Financial Officer Don Leclair's office, the newspaper said.

"We're not commenting on speculation," Ford spokesman Oscar Suris said of the report.

Meanwhile, Ford said that Stevens, one of the chief architects of its turnaround plan, is leaving.

Dave Szczupak, group vice president of manufacturing for the Americas, is also leaving by Oct. 1, a Ford spokesman said. Both executives have been at their current jobs for less than a year.

Stevens, one of the highest-ranking women in the automotive industry and the first female executive vice president at Ford, will be leaving after a 16-year career at the automaker.

She was named to the current post last October and was also in charge of Ford's turnaround efforts and its efforts to more sharply distinguish its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands.